Ciaudedda: Southern Italian Spring Vegetable Stew

Mafalde con la Ciaudedda

The early arrival of spring in the Mediterranean region renders the latter stages of the Lenten fast something that one can look forward to, no less then the glorious Eastertide that follows and the feasting on lamb and all manner of savoury and sweet pies. Fresh favas, spring onions, new potatoes, baby artichokes: all these together appear in spring vegetable stews that are made in various regions around the Mediterranean, including in Southern Italy. After reading and responding to Joy’s recent post on baby artichokes (link), I got a hankering for making ciaudedda, the version of the spring vegetable medley made in Lucania and with a visit to Caputo’s in Addison, I had most of the essential ingredients. Moved by fancy, I decided to take the somewhat unorthodox step of using the stew not as stew but rather as condiment to pasta and the combination made an especially nice piatto unico.



The first step is trimming and slicing the artichokes and then shelling and -- when necessary -- peeling the favas (only about 20% of these needed to be peeled). Then comes the chopping of the aromatics and the cooking of the soffritto (onion, garlic, green chiles – I had nice ones and thought they would add a nice dimension in place of the usual diavuletti). In making this dish, I used a rather ample amount of a high quality olive oil of the green and fruity sort. Once the soffritto was done, I added the other vegetables (the potatoes having already been boiled in the pasta water) and a little water to help them cook.


Given the texture of the condiment, I thought mafalde were an especially appropriate choice of shape for the pasta, and so the name I’ll give this dish is mafalde colla ciaudedda.


Now, another reasonable name for this dish would be ‘pasta primavera’ perhaps, but that one is already in use for a range of things that simply pair vegetables (not necessarily spring vegetables, it seems) and pasta.*


We enjoyed our mafalde colla ciaudedda served with some freshly ground black pepper and freshly grated pecorino. I was in the mood to put a fair amount of pecorino on and, when it melted into the cooking liquid of the vegetable medley (containing some starch from the potatoes), it produced a creamy and very satisfying little sauce.


Fresh fava beans, which I also wrote about last spring (link), are a humble but amazingly satisfying food, and the combination of them with new potatoes and artichokes is hard to beat. Ciaudedda is often made with a little pancetta included and, of course, that's a very tasty way to make the dish, but I also love the purely vegetarian version. Let me point out again that this dish is first and foremost a vegetable stew -- the springtime counterpart to summer's cianfotta, but the use of essentially the same preparation as a condiment for pasta is hardly an abuse of tradition: on the contrary, it's makes for a hell of a tasty meal.

Saluti agli amici,
Antonius

* In this regard, I must say that many or most of the American preparations that sport the name 'pasta primavera' strike me as ill-conceived and poorly executed concoctions and I shun them as I shun... well, come to think of it, I almost never eat pasta in restaurants...


Links to other recipes and cooking notes by this writer: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=55649#55649

Antonious, is exactly because your recipe and pictures are so interesting sounding, so delicious in appearance and design, that I must oppose, oppose with all my might this thread.

As you will note from the link to last year's fava bean thread, I am against the notion of spring dishes, when these so-called spring vegetables are only an idea so far in our gardens. Last year, it was a soft demurmer, a silly sourness, but as you may know, I have become more vehement, more strident, in my mantra of Eat Local. If I cannot have you at the vanguard, who can I have. We need to disdain the dishes that sound good, that sound right. Eat what is local. Eat what is seasonal.

Really, if you had followed my lead, you would have recieved a big box yesterday with six of the largest, sweetest carrots you have ever seen--that's what cold weather does to carrots. On the other hand, the chard is so tiny, so tender you can eat it raw. Likewise, there are thin green SPRING onions to use as you wish. The week before there was an ample supply of broccoli raab. Cannot you concoct proper pasta sauces from these ingredients?

Listen, I hope you you have those dishes just sitting on the counter, and you'll throw them away after reading this. OK

Vital Information wrote:Eat what is local. Eat what is seasonal.

So, we should never eat artichokes because they don't grow here?

I understand "Eat seasonal," because food is at its best when it's at peak season. But there's such a rich bounty of produce in the world that would be forbidden to Midwesterners if we all were to follow your "Eat local" rule.

If an airplane can bring me food from Chile at the peak of its freshness and ripeness, is there any reason -- relevant to the food itself and not bringing in forbidden political issues -- that I should avoid it?

LAZ wrote:

Vital Information wrote:Eat what is local. Eat what is seasonal.

So, we should never eat artichokes because they don't grow here?

I understand "Eat seasonal," because food is at its best when it's at peak season. But there's such a rich bounty of produce in the world that would be forbidden to Midwesterners if we all were to follow your "Eat local" rule.

If an airplane can bring me food from Chile at the peak of its freshness and ripeness, is there any reason -- relevant to the food itself and not bringing in forbidden political issues -- that I should avoid it?

Well, I would say, obviously, eat sparingly of artichokes or oranges or whatever, and when you do eat them, search out for quality suppliers. I mean right now, I have bananas, oranges and tangerines at my house.

As to whether an airplane can bring you food from Chile at the peak of freshness, and let's not talk about energy costs here, but I question really that statement. The stuff is not coming, like overnight. It takes days to process and ship. Most of the products are picked VERY green and often are artificially ripened. Believe me, do what I have and stick mostly to local produce and you will have a new meaning of what freshness tastes like.

Moreover, as I was discussing last night at dinner, part of the problem is, we have been duped into a notion that "fresh" is the best way to have a product. Which really tastes better, a local strawberry picked at the height of its (limited) season and then canned, dried or frozen for later eating, or one of those potato-strawberries now in the market. Sure, you cannot eat them the same way, but why do you have too?

Again, this is LTHForum, I'll avoid all the other issues, but on taste, try local with me, you'll get converted.

Vital Information wrote:Moreover, as I was discussing last night at dinner, part of the problem is, we have been duped into a notion that "fresh" is the best way to have a product. Which really tastes better, a local strawberry picked at the height of its (limited) season and then canned, dried or frozen for later eating, or one of those potato-strawberries now in the market. Sure, you cannot eat them the same way, but why do you have too?

I'll concede the potato strawberries and also the hardball winter tomatoes. But I've had wonderful raspberries and melons out of local season. Of course, it depends on what you're willing to pay.

For many foods, I agree that it's better to wait for local produce that's in season. But for things whose local season is fleeting and whose flavor isn't damaged by shipping -- say asparagus, or fresh chilies -- I don't see much wrong in extending the season by buying California or Florida crops.

I can remember when the produce section of a Midwestern supermarket in February contained only storage apples, storage root vegetables, iceberg lettuce and trucked-in oranges, and I'm heartily grateful for air freight.

Speaking of artichokes, I'll plug again one of my favorite places to get them: the Marketplace in Skokie (4817 W. Oakton). Their selection seems to be fresher than some other places, including Whole Foods, and I've always assumed this was because of turnover. Of course, they are also about 1/3 the price of WF.

Fresh favas are also available there, starting about now.

Listen, I hope you you have those dishes just sitting on the counter, and you'll throw them away after reading this. OK

I decided to take some time before responding to your post above because, to be quite honest, I was rather taken aback by the tone of some the of phrases you used, most especially the one cited above, which strikes me as rather out of line with the generally pleasant and collegial air that pervades discussions of home-cooking here. Beyond that, I find the idea of taking perfectly good food and throwing it out deeply disturbing. Now, if there are criticisms someone wishes to render as to how I went about making the dish, they may well be of interest, but I can say in all honesty that the dish pictured above was both delicious and very wholesome: to throw such food out uneaten would be an act of barbarism.

But, hopefully, you were just trying to make a point with a bit of rhetorical shock-therapy, so let’s let that issue rest.

You use the word ‘convert’ in your second post above and that seems appropriate for your presentation does sound like it is filled with a sort of religious zeal and righteous indignation. Alas, it leaves me unmoved, in part because you are preaching to someone for whom the message is not new, just more stridently expressed, and in part because the added fervour of your conviction leads to, in my opinion, unreasonable extremism.

I grew up in a time when many of the ingredients that are commonplaces of American cooking these days were far less available than they are today. All the fresh herbs and many of the vegetables that we ate in my extended family were grown in our gardens in Jersey or on the farms of relatives up on the edges of the Catskills. Once I left home and moved off to Belgium, I started shopping at the year-round weekly farmers’ markets and have maintained that habit to the degree that circumstances have permitted throughout the subsequent 25 years. Now that Amata and I finally have a little space in which to make a little vegetable and herb garden of our own, we have done so and enjoyed its products mightily last year and are expanding our tillage for the coming season. While it is, of course, always nice to hear of new markets and stores that carry interesting local items, I don’t feel any need to undergo ‘conversion’ in this regard.

Now, with respect to your particular horror at the dish I presented above here and others of its ilk, I will say the following.
• First, one needs to know the limitations of one’s environment. No artichokes are grown around here, at least not to any noteworthy degree. The number of other vegetables and nuts and fruits that I and others might wish to eat that are not and in many cases cannot be grown in this region are legion. If you wish to limit your diet to a sort of exercise in Illinoisan macrobiotica, feel free to do so, but I like figs and artichokes and olives and lemons and avocados and witloof and... well, the point is clear. I also like to eat on occasion fresh peppers and tomatoes and eggplants etc. etc. during times of the year when local products are obviously not available. Sure, imported vegetables are often not as good as local products and when they are really good, they’re often quite expensive, but much of commerce has developed to overcome the limitations of local climates.
• Now, in light of the preceding point, you surely will allow for the use of exotica, such as the artichoke, but presumably maintain your sense of outrage at my use of fresh favas in a “springtime dish,” since favas can be grown in this region but appear later in the season than these imported favas: I and others should not make this or other such dishes until the locally produced vegetables appear.
As I said in response to your “eat local” disapproval of my posts on fresh favas last year, I will happily buy locally produced favas if and when I encounter them at one of the farmers’ markets I visit. But your ‘philosophical’ or, more appropriately, religious approach to menu planning, however, satisfying and comforting it may be for you, I find unappealing in its extreme nature. The fact is that a major part of how I eat is intimately connected to who I am, to the ethnic and cultural background of my family. As someone raised in a strongly Italian cultural setting, a cultural setting in which food is an unquestionably central element, there is a whole body of culinary traditions which we follow. These traditions involve to a considerable degree a sort of food calendar or better still, two food calendars, one which conforms to the availability of local, seasonal produce, and another which – despite the fact that we are far from our ancestral home in central Italy – still follows the timing of the appearance of various comestibles in the ‘old country’, where their appearance was and to a degree still is closely tied to exigencies of the environment of the land there. Many -- though not all -- aspects of this foreign calendar are especially strong because of the close ties between certain foods and certain holidays: at Easter one eats lamb and fresh cheese, on Christmas Eve, one eats broccoli di rape, during Carnival one eats pork, and during Lent, one eats fresh peas and new potatoes and baby artichokes and fresh favas. I no more intend to abandon the traditional, inherited calendar -- whether that means I must sometimes buy imported favas or not -- than I intend to change my name or renounce Catholicism.

So then, I find your ‘eat local’ inclinations laudable enough, insofar as they conform to inclinations I’ve long had of supporting farmers’ market and enjoying the produce of private herb and vegetable gardens. But I have absolutely no inclination toward or interest in accepting an extreme and exaggerated approach to eating that would force me to limit my diet according to the availability of the local produce of northern Illinois and abandon the ties to the rich and wholesome culinary traditions of my family’s Italian culture. I will continue to eat with pleasure and on occasion to post on such seasonal dishes as ciaudedda.

Antonius

Antonius, I have addressed privately, the *tone* of my post above. As to eating local, I would like to say a few things publically.

Since the May Eat Local Challenge has started I've had Califorina olive oil, New Zealand wine, Lebanese olives; salt, pepper, garlic, tabasco flavor my foods; I have been to a restaurant that serves a lot of local stuff, Vie, and I have been to places that could hardly care, like Peterrino's (not very good btw). I know there are issues of taste, diet, health, economy and time that keep me from eating local all the time, all the way. That does not bother me in the least. On the other hand, I greatly enjoy seeing how other people do it on the Eat Local Blog.

There is no "right way" to eat local, and I do not expect people to eat the way I do. Do I think eating local is better for a variety of reasons, not the least being taste, well fer sure. That's why I like to write about it.

Rob

Vital Information wrote:Antonius, I have addressed privately, the *tone* of my post above.

As I said, Rob, I surmised your call for me to throw out my stew was most likely just rhetorical hyperbole and so now I'm surprised that you who first brought that approach to the thread are surprised at my use -- according to my own style -- of the same. But I admit, my tone can be misleading in its own way.

As to eating local, I would like to say a few things publically.

Since the May Eat Local Challenge has started I've had Califorina olive oil, New Zealand wine, Lebanese olives; salt, pepper, garlic, tabasco flavor my foods... I know there are issues of taste, diet, health, economy and time that keep me from eating local all the time, all the way. That does not bother me in the least. On the other hand, I greatly enjoy seeing how other people do it on the Eat Local Blog.

There is no "right way" to eat local, and I do not expect people to eat the way I do. Do I think eating local is better for a variety of reasons, not the least being taste, well fer sure. That's why I like to write about it.

In light of this eminently reasonable statement, I don't think we disagree very much at all, though I now fail completely to understand the point of you opposing 'with all your might' my original post. My post was about a springtime stew -- if you want to make it as much as possible with local items, that's great, but I wanted to make it when I found artichokes and favas that were small and tender, during Lent, when vegeatables are pretty much all I eat. And it was very tasty.

I should add too that I think serious discussion of the issues raised above is worthwhile. It's good to take some time and analyse why one eats what one eats. So thanks for the response.

Antonius